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Welcome! I'm Nicola, I encourage mums who are struggling with tough times make their home happy. My husband has Crohn's disease, one of my sons has Down Syndrome and yet - most of the time - our home is a happy place and I'd love to share with you how that looks!

When you’re in the workplace, as long as you’re fairly switched on, you probably don’t struggle to get your work done. Perhaps you have set tasks, or customers or patients come in for appointments, or you have a case or client you’re currently working on. Whichever it is, you’ll end up getting through your day and feel like you accomplished something.

As a stay at home mum you can go weeks without feeling like you accomplished anything.

Although your days are filled with lots of tasks, changing nappies, preparing food, playing games, reading books, cleaning toilets and swaying with babies in your arms, it can feel like there’s very little to show for it.

A day I achieved something more than survival

Every job I’ve had (apart from the newsagents I worked in, where I mostly spent my entire wage each week on sweets-at-cost…) I’ve had to go through an annual review process with goal setting. Sometimes it was just a paper exercise but there were managers who made this a useful process that encouraged my strengths and allowed opportunities to improve on my weaknesses. It was the first time I had conversations about my need to complete tasks and not get 95% of the way there then start something new. (if you’re into your Myers Briggs types, I’m a classic ENTP. With ADHD. The worst combo ever for getting a job done)

It takes thinking about your weaknesses before you can work on them. And once you’ve identified them, you need to be specific about goals to address them.

So what’s that got to do with being a mum at home? Well, if we are struggling with parts of our life at home with little ones, why not try and do something about it? And if we’re good at things, why not think of ways to further that, maybe even find ways to make income from it?

I try to think at the start of each year about strengths and weaknesses in my life at home and come up with specific goals to address them. Later in the week I’m going to do a follow up post about goal setting for your home, and looking at other areas of your life you could be intentional about as a stay at home mum. Areas like hobbies, spiritual life and our long term career plans.

I also have a printable page for you to use to do this for 2017 if you sign up to my email list, on the right hand sidebar.

PS – I am AWFUL at paperwork and reading and sorting emails. I normally do a big clearout when I reach 10,000 UNREAD emails. Yup, you read that right! So, I appreciate signing up for another email list is not something that people want to do, but I promise I’m not organised enough to spam you with lots of emails! They’ll be occasional and hopefully an encouragement.

Sometimes I worry that I don’t have anything of worth to say to you, but I’m trying to practically encourage other mums in this crazy stage who really don’t feel like they’ve got it all together, especially when they sit down for a rare break and look on Instagram and think, “What the actual….is this what motherhood looks like for other mums? Outdoor winter picnics and homemade oaty bar snack for the kids? Big, uncluttered hallways?” (it isn’t. Well, at least not here!)

Happy is her Home

I am a featured blogger on the She31 Bloggers Showcase 2017. Check out their website by clicking the photo above to find some other great faith based bloggers.

I'd love to keep in touch with you with the occasional email - submit your email address below for some encouragement in your inbox!

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About me:

Hi! I'm Nicola and I live in Belfast with my husband Colin and two sons - Daniel is 5 and Rory is 2. Baby 3 is due in early 2018.

I'm a Christian and an average-to-poor homemaker who has found herself a stay at home mum. I want this to be a place to encourage other mums who are feeling overwhelmed, perhaps because they too have a child with special needs or care for a family member with a chronic illness, or maybe just with life with pre-schoolers, believe me there are days that's the most complicated problem I've got to solve! And I always like to share the positive stories about Down Syndrome.